What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America.

Born Losers

In today's increasingly polarized political landscape it seems that fewer and fewer citizens hold out hope of persuading one another. Even among those who have not given up on persuasion, few will admit to practicing the art of persuasion known as rhetoric. To describe political speech as "rhetoric" today is to accuse it of being superficial or manipulative. In Saving Persuasion, Bryan Garsten uncovers the early modern origins of this suspicious attitude toward rhetoric and seeks to loosen its grip on contemporary political theory. Revealing how deeply concerns about rhetorical speech shaped both ancient and modern political thought, he argues that the artful practice of persuasion ought to be viewed as a crucial part of democratic politics. He provocatively suggests that the aspects of rhetoric that seem most dangerous--the appeals to emotion, religious values, and the concrete commitments and identities of particular communities--are also those which can draw out citizens' capacity for good judgment. Against theorists who advocate a rationalized ideal of deliberation aimed at consensus, Garsten argues that a controversial politics of partiality and passion can produce a more engaged and more deliberative kind of democratic discourse.

Saving Persuasion

Academic research and policy discussions of credit markets usually focus on borrowing by firms and producers rather than households, which are typically analyzed in terms of their savings and portfolio choices. The Economics of Consumer Credit brings together leading international researchers to focus specifically on consumer debt, presenting current empirical and theoretical research crucial to ongoing policy debates on such topics as privacy rules, the regulation of contractual responsibilities, financial stability, and overindebtedness.

The rapidly developing consumer credit industry in the United States is mirrored by that in Europe, and this volume is noteworthy for its cross-national perspective. Several chapters compare the use of credit markets by households in different countries, while others focus on single country case studies--including consumer credit dynamics in Italy, the role of housing expenditure in the cyclical pattern of borrowing in the United Kingdom, and the use of credit cards by U.S. consumers--to illustrate general insights. Other chapters draw policy lessons from the U.S. experience with bankruptcy regulation and the development of the credit counseling industry. Finally, the book reviews historical, theoretical, and empirical aspects of information sharing, of particular interest in light of the integration of European Union credit markets.

The Economics of Consumer Credit

Does the information on the Web offer many alternative accounts of reality, or does it subtly align with an official version? In Information Politics on the Web, Richard Rogers identifies the cultures, techniques, and devices that rank and recommend information on the Web, analyzing not only the political content of Web sites but the politics built into the Web's infrastructure. Addressing the larger question of what the Web is for, Rogers argues that the Web is still the best arena for unsettling the official and challenging the familiar.

Winner of the 2005 Best Information Science Book of the Year Award presented by the American society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST).

Information Politics on the Web

For decades, a new type of terrorism has been quietly gathering ranks in the world. America's ability to remain oblivious to these new movements ended on September 11, 2001. The Islamist fanatics in the global Salafi jihad (the violent, revivalist social movement of which al Qaeda is a part) target the West, but their operations mercilessly slaughter thousands of people of all races and religions throughout the world. Marc Sageman challenges conventional wisdom about terrorism, observing that the key to mounting an effective defense against future attacks is a thorough understanding of the networks that allow these new terrorists to proliferate.

Based on intensive study of biographical data on 172 participants in the jihad, Understanding Terror Networks gives us the first social explanation of the global wave of activity. Sageman traces its roots in Egypt, gestation in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war, exile in the Sudan, and growth of branches worldwide, including detailed accounts of life within the Hamburg and Montreal cells that planned attacks on the United States.

U.S. government strategies to combat the jihad are based on the traditional reasons an individual was thought to turn to terrorism: poverty, trauma, madness, and ignorance. Sageman refutes all these notions, showing that, for the vast majority of the mujahedin, social bonds predated ideological commitment, and it was these social networks that inspired alienated young Muslims to join the jihad. These men, isolated from the rest of society, were transformed into fanatics yearning for martyrdom and eager to kill. The tight bonds of family and friendship, paradoxically enhanced by the tenuous links between the cell groups (making it difficult for authorities to trace connections), contributed to the jihad movement's flexibility and longevity. And although Sageman's systematic analysis highlights the crucial role the networks played in the terrorists' success, he states unequivocally that the level of commitment and choice to embrace violence were entirely their own.

Understanding Terror Networks combines Sageman's scrutiny of sources, personal acquaintance with Islamic fundamentalists, deep appreciation of history, and effective application of network theory, modeling, and forensic psychology. Sageman's unique research allows him to go beyond available academic studies, which are light on facts, and journalistic narratives, which are devoid of theory. The result is a profound contribution to our understanding of the perpetrators of 9/11 that has practical implications for the war on terror.

Understanding Terror Networks

Providing access to scientific and technical information for legitimate uses while protecting it from potential terrorists is complex and poses difficult policy choices. Federally funded, extramural academic research (basic and applied) is supposed to be “classified” if it poses a security threat; otherwise, it is to be “unrestricted.” Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, controls increasingly have been placed on some types of unclassified research and scientific and technical information, including information used to inform decision making and citizen oversight. These controls include “sensitive but unclassified” (SBU) labels; restrictive contract clauses; visa controls; controlled laboratories; and the widening of legal restrictions on access to some federal biological, transportation, critical infrastructure, geospatial, environmental impact, and nuclear information. On December 16, 2005, President Bush instructed federal agencies to standardize procedures to designate, mark, and handle SBU information, and to forward recommendations for government-wide standards to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Federal agencies do not use uniform definitions of SBU information or have consistent policies for safeguarding or releasing it. This lack of uniformity and consistency raises issues about how to identify SBU information, especially scientific and technical information; how to keep it from those who would use it malevolently, while allowing access for those who need to use it; and how to develop uniform nondisclosure policies and penalties.

'Sensitive But Unclassified' Information and Other Controls: Policy and Options for Scientific and Technical Information

From Publishers Weekly
One of the enduring puzzles of World War II is Stalin's dismissal of unmistakable evidence of a looming German invasion, a blunder that contributed to the disastrous Russian defeats of 1941. This engaging study of the Soviet intelligence apparatus helps clarify the mystery. Murphy, an ex-CIA Soviet specialist and co-author of Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War, argues that Stalin knew virtually everything for many months before the attack. Soviet spies in the German government offered detailed reports of invasion plans. Britain and the United States passed along warnings. Soviet agents in Eastern Europe noted the millions of German soldiers heading east to the Soviet border and their stock-piling of weapons and Russian phrase books. Stalin rejected these reports as Western provocations and barred the Red Army from taking elementary precautions, like chasing off the German reconnaissance planes surveying their defenses. Murphy presents a bizarre additional wrinkle in two letters Hitler sent to allay Stalin's suspicions, which claimed that the German armies massing in Poland were preparing to attack England and warned Stalin that rogue Wehrmacht units might invade Russia against Hitler's wishes-a smokescreen that inhibited Stalin's response to the German buildup and initial attacks. Murphy chalks up the debacle to Stalin's clinging to a Marxist fantasy of the capitalist powers fighting each other to exhaustion, and to the paralysis instilled in the Red Army by his purges. Fearful subordinates bowed to Stalin's absurd complacency about German intentions; the one intelligence chief who dared challenge his delusions was arrested and shot. Murphy's well-researched account offers both a meticulous reconstruction of an intelligence epic and a window into the tragedy of Stalin's despotism.

What Stalin Knew : The Enigma of Barbarossa

The Senate rejected a proposal to establish an independent office to investigate ethics complaints against its members, and then cleared the way to pass a broad-based ethics and lobbying bill this week.

Senate Votes Down Outside Ethics Office

Congressional investigators testing U.S. port security smuggled enough radioactive material into the United States last year to make two radiological "dirty" bombs, officials told a Senate panel yesterday.

In December, undercover teams from the Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit arm, carried small amounts of cesium-137 -- a radioactive material used for cancer therapy, industrial gauges and well logging -- in the trunks of rental cars through border checkpoints in Texas and Washington state. The material triggered radiation alarms, but the smugglers used false documents to persuade U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors to let them through with it.

"These are documents my 20-year-old son could easily develop with a simple Internet search," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who chaired the hearing into covert nuclear threats before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee yesterday. "It is a problem when it is tougher to buy cold medicine than it is to acquire enough material to construct a dirty bomb."

GAO: Customs Failed 'Dirty Bomb' Test

On his last visit to Iran, Canadian-based blogger Hossein Derakhshan was detained and interrogated, then forced to sign a letter of apology for his blog writings before being allowed to leave the country. Compared to others, Derakhshan is lucky.

Iran Hard-Line Regime Cracks Down on Blogs